


Counting Sheep

by Amy (InnitMarvelous), I love Tony Stark 3000 FOREVER (InnitMarvelous), InnitMarvelous, tsg (InnitMarvelous)



Series: Dear Tony [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: After the death of someone you love, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Letter, Mentions of alcohol, Not A Fix-It, Pepper misses Tony, Pepper's letter to Tony, Poor Pepper, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), She is hurting so much, This Is Sad, Thoughts of Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Trying to move on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:13:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23505925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnitMarvelous/pseuds/Amy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnitMarvelous/pseuds/I%20love%20Tony%20Stark%203000%20FOREVER, https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnitMarvelous/pseuds/InnitMarvelous, https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnitMarvelous/pseuds/tsg
Summary: Tony,Tonight will be my last night inourbed.
Relationships: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts
Series: Dear Tony [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608019
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	Counting Sheep

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place 2 or 3 years after Endgame.

Tony,

Tonight will be my last night in _our_ bed.

Yes, my love, I am getting a new bed for myself bright and early tomorrow morning.

This was such a **hard** decision for me to reach because I know it means I'm giving up one more piece of our life together that brings to mind so many of the memories I have of you. 

So why would I want to replace our bed you might ask? I suppose there is only one answer I can give you and that is I simply can't take any... all of it anymore

I can’t take

turning over in _our_ bed and reaching out for you only

only to find a cold bare and oh so _cruelly_ empty space

the space where _you_ should be, Tony

I can’t take

knowing that I will never be able to feel your arms around me 

and I can never hold _you_ in my arms again either

knowing what can never be again. it hurts so _very much_

But you know I've held out longer in getting a new bed for myself longer than I ever thought I would or could. I mean it's been over two years since you died, and every night that I have spent facing the absence of you has been nothing short of a new form of exquisite agony I knew dreamed could exist. I have felt such a deep pain within my very being that sometimes I wish there was something I could do to remove it.

I wish I had a way to numb it, to make myself not feel it anymore.

But I can't. 

I can't do _that_.

I can't do that, and I won't say it's because of the fact I am trying to honor your memory, or because I don't want to tarnish the memory of our love.

No, I can't lose myself in the bottom of a bottle, and _yes_ Tony, I have thought about doing just that more than one time. I know it would probably scare you if I admitted how many times I have thought about drowning myself. There is only one reason those thoughts haven't crossed the line from me only entertaining the idea into making it an actual reality.

Morgan.

She is literally my only saving grace right now. 

If I didn’t have our little girl

_She's_ the only reason I haven't crawled into bed with a couple of bottles, and given up on living. She's the reason I get up every morning, and go through the motions for most of every day.

So as much as I hurt _all_ of the time, I won't hurt _her_ by making her an orphan.

Whether it's in the emotional sense of the word orphan, or in the literal, I **REFUSE** to be that selfish. 

But Tony, it's so hard, and I am _tired_. 

So unbelievably tired.

It's so hard when I think of all the years, and decades to come without you by my side because those years and decades to come have lost most, if not every ounce, of their appeal.

Looking back over everything I have written, I just realized that I have written about a lot of things I didn't intend to write in this letter. When I started it, it was to talk about me getting a new bed for me, and nothing else. 

But I suppose I should have known that I was setting myself up for all the feelings I've been having because if I am honest, I **never** really stop feeling them.

My intentions when I started this letter was to tell you I was going to get a new bed, and that _only_. 

So here it goes.

I am downsizing to a queen sized, by the way. I don't really need a very big bed anymore but I won't go to anything smaller than a queen because of Morgan.

I won't go any smaller for her because although it's not often like it was in the beginning, she still wants to sleep with me sometimes. In the first few months after your... she would crawl into bed with me after a while or there were a lot of nights where she wouldn't even start out in her own bed. On those nights that she didn't sleep in her own bed in her own room was because I just couldn't bring myself to tuck her in her bed.

I admit that I think I _needed_ her more than anything to be with me, to be closer to me rather than her being just as room away from me across the hallway. I miss you so much, Tony, and having our daughter who is _half_ of you too snuggled in bed with me helped me from sobbing all night long and more to the point she kept me from losing my mind.

But Morgan’s finally sleeping on her own again, and I know it's time for a change. I can't keep looking at your empty side of the bed or sleeping in it knowing you'll never be there again to wrap your arms around me. It hurts too much to keep doing it and I can't do it anymore.

I can't.

So our bed is being hauled out of the house by complete strangers. I don't _really_ want to do this, but I don't know what else to do because I can't face more nights in such a big, empty **cold** bed. 

  
  
  



End file.
